Into the abyss of the Norway massacre

When police are caught off guard by a massacre, it is usually for good reasons — the society is so unused to them that there is no contingency plan, no automatic reaction. Thus, it took Oslo’s SWAT team more than an hour to get to Utoeya island where Anders Behring Breivik was allegedly slaughtering teenagers attending a Social Democratic/Labour party youth camp; they had no helicopter at their disposal; indeed, it took them 20 minutes to find a boat.

The global right-wing commentariat were not so slow off the mark. Barely had the news of a bombing and a massacre hit the wires, than they responded with due caution, diligence, and seriousness — by blaming Muslims. Though they had absolutely nothing to go on, and though the mass-shooting profile did not fit the model of European Islamist terror in the slightest, the theme was irresistible to them — peaceful country in leftish Scandinavia, largely staying out of Western military adventures, hit equally by the “global war”, etc, etc. How could it not be?

Our own Andrew Bolt was one of the first off the mark, noting ominously:

“Once the identity of the attackers becomes known, the consequences for Norway’s immigration policies could be profound”:

While also close to home, another News Ltd blogger reported a claim of responsibility, later shown to be spurious, to announce that a group opposed to the publication of Mohammed cartoons was “suspected” to be the culprits.

They weren’t and they never had been — Anders Breivik had been captured alive on the island, and phone-ins from this or that group are a dime a dozen in such situations.

A lone political extremist bombed the government center here on Friday, killing 7 people, the police said, before heading to an island summer camp for young members of the governing Labor Party and killing at least 80 people.

The police arrested a 32-year-old Norwegian man in connection with both attacks, the deadliest on Norwegian soil since World War II.

Apologies for no earlier update. Flying today.

UPDATE II. Leftsts in comments take offence at reports, sourced from the Guardian, that Islamic terrorists may have been responsible for a murderous attack on civilians. On reflection, they’re right. The very idea is laughable.

Updates didn’t stop US bloggers, even when the gunman’s ethnicity and right-wing politics had become known. Here’s Frontpage magazine:

Simultaneous attacks like these are the staple of the Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, but the arrest of Breivik is leading authorities to downplay an Islamist connection. One anonymous police official told the Associated Press that “it seems like that this is not linked to any international terrorist organisations at all” and “is probably more Norway’s Oklahoma City than it is Norway’s World Trade Centre”. However, there are “no known domestic militant groups in Norway with the capability to stage large car bomb attacks”. The fact that Breivik did not choose to become a “martyr” does indicate a non-Islamist motivation. A key question will be how Breivik obtained the expertise and materials for the attacks, and whether Islamic extremists played some role despite their ideological differences.

Suspicion immediately fell on Mullah Krekar, who lives in Norway and is the founder of Ansar al-Islam …

Meanwhile the Bolter jumped in on the global jihad angle:

Already the unconfirmed reports suggest our immediate suspicions are correct (UPDATE: No, they aren’t), although the shooter’s appearance tells us to still be cautious about our conclusions:

Bolt then ran an “Even so, the history of Islamic violence in Scandinavia…” line, despite the new information.

He later deleted the reference, writing:

(UPDATE: i’ve removed here an excerpt from the first report I linked to spelling out the earlier Islamic threats and attacks that led many, including the Guardian and New York Times, to initially suspect an Islamic attack. I had left it up so as to explain the context of my original reaction, and so not to seem I was trying to cover up my original suspicions. Now I find that leaving it up is being interpreted as my insisting on a gratuitous point instead.)

Meanwhile, in the US National Review, Andrew McCarthy noted that:

In point of fact, if one of what appears to be several conspirators is neither a Muslim nor from an Islamic country, that does cut against the likelihood that this is another episode of Islamic terrorism. On the other hand, there are facts and circumstances that cut in the other direction — including that a jihadist organisation has already claimed responsibility; that most terrorism is carried out by Islamists …

Got that? Even if it was an attack on a left-wing party carried out by an ethnic Norwegian in a country with a persistent racist hard-right, it still might have been Muslims because, in one 10-year period, they were responsible for the majority of terror in Europe. Stunning reasoning.

By Sunday, this sort of reasoning was looking not merely threadbare, but intellectually dishonest. The Oslo massacre was turning out to be an abyss, the sadistic mass murder of the young — but there its resemblance to a high school massacre ended. It was clearly a conscious political act by an apparently articulate member of a mainstream right-wing Norwegian political party, who confessed immediately to the massacre and the bombings — and was willing to explain them in political terms.

Though his act was cold-bloodedly ruthless beyond description, he was not psychotically deranged as Arizona killer Jared Loughner was. Indeed in refusing to label himself as “guilty” he made clear that he understood the nature of his actions — as an extreme atrocity required to halt “cultural Marxism” in its tracks.

Ah, where have we heard this before? From the hysterical right, for the past decade — in their fear that Europe is being extinguished by multiculturalism, immigration, blah blah blah. From Mark Steyn to the current guest speaker of the CIS, Thilo Sarrazin, author of Germany Abolishes Itself, this absurd and racist discourse has been ramped up and up and up, to create an atmosphere of crisis. They have turned a blind eye to the murderous propensities of European racism, and the violent history of the past century.

They would be well-advised to practise a little self-reflection. They seem to imagine that European terror has been either a left or an Islamic affair exclusively — forgetting perhaps the “black fascist” terror attacks of Italy in the ’70s (such as the Bologna railway bomb of the ’80s), Ulster-group terror, Croatian Ustashe groups and others — and of course the font of modern terror itself, Nazism, in which the state’s only purpose became terror.

Perhaps it’s time that those who wish to claim that there is a reasonable way to talk about race, culture and immigration might want to start talking back to some of their followers, many of whom seem to make an appearance in their comments strings. Islamist terror has been on the wane for years, though far from over — meanwhile, it is highly possible that Breivik will be no isolated author of atrocity, but the start of a new period in which terror once more comes from the Right.

So many right-wingers were perfectly happy to condemn the association that was made between Loughner and Sarah Palin’s violent rhetoric and militaristic slogans. And yet they jump at the chance to condemn Islamic terrorism when it’s completely untrue.

Andrew Bolt, ‘Loughner and the Rorschach reporting of the Left’:
“It also shows how easily media reporting of events like this can be nothing more than the response to a Rorschach test, with journalists imposing on an event a narrative shaped by their prejudices and not by any evidence. “
It’s a pity he didn’t heed his own sanctimonious advice.

Mostly a good commentary Guy, although I think that an initial assumption that the attack was Islamist on the basis that an Islamist group had claimed responsibility, is probably reasonable. If journalists were not free to make that sort of interim assumption, we would never receive any news until a full police investigation and court hearing. The error was in not immediately and fully correcting the reasonable but wrong assumption as soon as the facts became clear.

“meanwhile, it is highly possible that Breivik will be no isolated author of atrocity, but the start of a new period in which terror once more comes from the Right”… how utterly chilling a thought. Please no.

Surely time our own aussie crazies were reigned in. This constant drum beat - Labor government only one death from falling rhetoric etc etc is unhelpful in keeping the lid on the right wingnuts.
A reading of blog responses to refugee and asylum seekers issues is positively frightening.
Do we really share this country with people wanting to Shoot/Drown/slaughter human beings arriving by boat?
Time our politrical leaders pulled their heads in and close their loose lips.
This is not censorship - it is common sense and good manners not to engage in hatemongering.

First thought (I must confess) was that it was islamic terrorism but, as in the case of Port Arthur, the truth is much more difficult to understand. Just waiting now for the conspiracy theories to come out as happened after Port Arthur, 9/11, etc etc.

I woke up in the morning reading the ABC and knowing that 2 bombs had exploded and a man was shooting on an island but, thank god for ABC, no suppusitions on who was responsible. Even then I guessed it was an US style home-grown terrorist but I was willing to wait to hear more. Then they started saying he was a right wing Christian conservative. Well there you go.

@NUYTSUA - What is wrong with a ‘journalist’(I use that term advisedly, as Bolt is certainly not one) stating, that we do not know what was/is behind the attacks/murderers/assaults/bombings etc? Better that then shooting their mouth off, only to look like fools!

“Self-regulation”?
Anyone here tried reading “political correspondent Blott’s” political correspondence with a copy of the Limited News “Professional Conduct Policy” open nearby? To get some sort of grasp of his (and those that employ him), real “regard” for such “piffle” - beyond the empty motherhood rhetoric?
Like Howard’s “Ministerial Code of Conduct”.

Can’t agree with your last statement. I think it should be the start of something. I hope so anyway.

This sort of deranged individual is only emboldened and “inspired” by a climate and culture in which hatred and fear are considered legitimate - even to the point of seeing themselves as crusaders acting for the “silent majority”… the disarmed and dispossessed battlers on struggle street.

moderator: this comment has been edited to adhere to moderation code of conduct.

The tenor of debate, the public language of disagreement, has taken on a feverish fanaticism over the last few years. It is particularly apparent in those Murdoch vehicles like Fox News in the USA where shock jocks and agitators of the ignorant have been given free reign.

Hopefully the dreadful events in Norway might turn us to look at what we are letting these pundits of paranoia to do to our own culture and our thinking and what we should deem acceptable in the public debate.

Regarding the media’s reluctance to use ‘fundamentalist Christian’, Breivik’s ideology appears to be more like far-right white-nationalism (using ‘culturally Christian’ as a euphemism for ‘white European’ has become popular among the far right, in the hope that it’ll stop people noticing that they’re racists) than anything we’d normally understand the term ‘fundamentalist Christian’ to mean. He doesn’t seem to want to impose a theocratic state, for a start.

@johnb78. I have read in mainstream media that he had links with “christian fundamentalist groups” - whatever that might mean - and wanted to recreate a “knights templar” type crusade. I guess it’s easy for fundamental racists to hang onto a religious tag to give them more credibility, and so for the media to associate his actions with religion is giving tacit approval to a very tenuous link.

Again this conveniently overlooks that he was a right-wing, ultra-nationalist and Christian extremist zealot. These explains appear even more convenient given that right-wing, fundamentalist Christians are constantly lobbying against violent video games. My point here isn’t that violent video are great and that all primary school students should play them, rather that there is no proven link between violent video games and gun massacres, and yet the mass media has deliberately turned the other way when it comes to the evidence provided by Breivik himself that his motivations were political, and have chosen to blame video games instead.

This is starting to look like a rather nasty piece of misdirection. The right-wing political motivations of Breivik are being air-brushed out of history because they are just a little too inconvenient and run counter to the prevailing media view that multiculturalism, marxists, greenies, and leftists in general are to blame for all our woes.

Sorry Guy - I got side-tracked! Great article which points out the journalistic preoccupation with terrorists of the Muslim variety. I listened to the BBC (through ABC News Radio) and thought they did a reasonable job of reporting the facts without too much prejudice.
As other people have commented, more worrying is the state of debate on so-called left/right issues all across the western world. I think it is high time it was toned down in this country. When it was reported that a “shock-jock” on Sydney radio can talk of “putting the Prime Minister in a chaff bag and dropping it off out to sea”, then things have gone too far.
There should be MORE regulation of the media (all types) not less! Otherwise we will see those of the extreme right persuasion carrying out such acts.

Geez folks… your moderator is getting a bit precious don’t you reckon when one cannot say that a couple of well known fear and hate mongers (named) are responsible for dragging political debate into the sewer and creating a climate where fear and hatred are considered legitimate - even justified.
Too coy by half.

Hitler was a Catholic! There’s several quotes of his where he almost sounds like a US president(Bush) an Australian PM(Howard)(christian? variety that is) or a British PM(Blair).

I find it interesting, that this horrific crime/s brings out the shock/horror of some of the world’s greatest hypocrites and despots, who, as others have correctly pointed out, brought about the deaths of over 1 million people in Iraq? Who knows how many in Afghanistan? I feel sickened by them all - regardless! I also feel sickened by the ‘agreement’ signed today to traffic in people with Malaysia?

That’s OK though isn’t it? It’s not as though they’re real people - like us? Lest We Forget!

That there are also right-wingnuts in Australia was demonstrated a couple of weeks ago when Joe Hockey was adressing some gathering of party faithful when one such wingnut piped up with a question about “Australians taking up arms against this government”. Hockey, the in-house blustering buffoon (now that Alexander Downer is gone), instead of slapping him down hard that he was talking sedition and treason, had the temerity to sympathise with him, and wave this outrageous comment away with a limp lettuce leaf-like “this is a peaceful country”. Hopefully at least he had the nouse to direct this person to the attention of the police, and also hopefully the right-conservative commentariat pauses to reflect what it is stirring up in this country, although I expect the latter is too much to hope for.

We have the 2GB “entertainer” Alan Jones talking about sending Julia Gillard out to sea in a chaff bag, and his acolytes phone in raging in support. They rail on about carbon tax/price as if it’s the end of the world, and they demand change NOW!!!!

This climate of hate - whatever News Ltd. and its apologists might say - is happily chugging along looking n’ prayin’ n’ hopin’ for that one little event that might just bring about such a change.

There was a link to an Israeli article posted by Bernard Keane today on Twitter which quite turned my stomach. It argued that despite this act being committed by a white Norwegian, the underlying problem is Muslim immigration and that “needs be talked about”.

Guy makes the point that Europe is now showing signs of these ultra-right thugs emerging from shadows and it’s disturbingly ironic that the same forces in Israel should be spurring it on.

I remain impressed by the Norge political & public reaction to a tragedy that, per capita is nigh on twice that of WTC, yet they speak of justice & law, not massive retaliation, dead or alive, with us or ag’in us, of too recent memory.

When I first saw the reports on the TV it took about ten seconds to work out it was the work of a right wing nutter yet the media seemed to run with muslim extremist angle. Bit sad when an average joe blow like me is one step ahead of the media. What the hell has gone wrong with the media???????

“People don’t read Andrew Bolt for news. They go to him to have their prejudices confirmed. In other words, the agenda he pursues with almost religious fervour is more important than the facts, which are just there to be adjusted to his world view - one in which hard-working, white, conservative, Christian people are under attack from the brown, bludging, Muslim hordes and meddling bleeding heart “leftists”.”
- Thanks to thefailedestate.blogspot.com

Am I the only one that finds it strange that Breivik, driven to his acts of murder by his hatred of Islam, finds it appropriate to kill a bunch of non Muslim Norwegians..?

As for the Christian fundamentalist tag…rediculous. There seems to be a tendency in mainstream media to add a religious tag to any fanatic out there. Better to rather study his manifesto or listen to interviews by people that knew him.

This guy is a nationalist that saw his culture being swamped - as many Europeans are feeling at the moment.

As for violent videos games not having an influence. Thats like saying the trillions of $$ companies spend on advertising is wasted because it will not influence people in any way..Get real.

The shameful thing about all of this is, this maniac will get no more than 21 years in jail! That is the maximum penalty for murder in Norway. He won’t get 91 consecutive life sentences, are 91 deaths worth 21 years? he will be out of jail at 53 years of age.
Yet, many far left loons on here are linking this nutjobs actions with our own politictians.

@berachan. Agree with most of what you say although the link to video games is tenuous at best. I’d be more inclined to say he was drawn towards these sorts of games rather than they influenced his actions. I’ve played manyof the games that would be classed as ultra violent & it hasn’t made me inclined to go out and hurt anyone.

Surely the point of this - the lesson that we could or must learn - is that describing people we disagree with as “far left loons”, “Brown’s bitch”, “JuLiar” and the like injects a poison into public debate in which madmen are “inspired” to acts of “heroic bravery”. Where are Crikey’s moderators when you need ‘em?

“Yet, many far left loons on here are linking this nutjobs actions with our own politictians.”

“we could all learn from the Norwegians’ sadly stoic but essentially humane response to this appalling event.”

Count me amongst the “far left loons” and against cults of any description especially fundamentalist religions. To use this issue as an attack on “far left loons” shows the fellow travellers of fascism in their true light.

Violence is the use of physical force to cause injury, damage or death. I am not aware of any video games while being played, that use physical force to cause actual injury, damage or death.

I doubt the actions of the perpetrators of the Armenian, Jewish, Romani and Cambodian genocides or the Nanking massacre to name some 20th century examples, could have done any worse if they had been informed by ‘violent’ video games.

Video games that simulate causing injury, damage or death only reflect underlying characteristics of human nature. Authoritarians always like to divert attention away from real causes.

@Peter Ormonde: Yes, it’s a degree of poison pen that seems to be seeping across the Pacific, and yes, the moderators should get on it. But they seem more interested in covering themselves from readers who leave them liable to libel suits from thin-skinned shock-jocks like AJ.

Surely the point of this - the lesson that we could or must learn - is that describing people we disagree with as “far left loons”, “Brown’s bitch”, “JuLiar” and the like injects a poison into public debate in which madmen are “inspired” to acts of “heroic bravery”. Where are Crikey’s moderators when you need ‘em?

Too busy deleting posts like mine.

I made the crime of point out how similar Breivik’s tirades against “leftists”, “marxists”, “Islamists” and “multiculturalists” (just read his Manifesto) were to Bolt’s own talking points. A point, which I think, is relevant to this thread.

Johnfromplanetearth can call people far left loons without censure.

[Moderator: We’re actually down several staff this week, so please forgive our minor errors. In regards to the “far left loons”, as it wasn’t aimed at a single person, I didn’t see it as a personal attack.]

@ PETER ORMONDE 25 July - 4.50pm. I had the same experience. One of my posts was removed by the moderator and as far as I’m concerned there was no reason for this. I was only talking about the attitudes here to Muslim arrivals by boat etc., which as it turns out is highly relevant to this madman’s actions in Norway.
I note the Moderator’s comment above, which makes me feel a bit better. I hope we are still able to voice our opinions on issues without facing the chop, particularly when no one is named or any bad language used. After all that is why I subscribe to Crikey!

@JOHNFROMPLANETEARTH - Until this tragedy, Norway’s murder rate was the best/least? in the world. They don’t have jails like we do. It’s an island where inmates work, live in small houses with about 4-6 to each cottage. There was a documentary on SBS or ABC some months ago. It was very interesting. Locking people up forever isn’t always the ‘best’ actions. Of course, crimes of this magnitude are in a section all their own! I’d put Bush, Blair and Howard in the same league. The only difference is, that they didn’t soil their hands on the trigger/s? Why discriminate re the illegitimacy of their actions? IF it was an ‘illegal war’ aren’t the deaths murder?

@DAVE - Who’s more warped, you or????Nothing resembling Assange at all. He’s never talked about violence, committed violent acts, or tried to justify violence? He’s just made public govt violence?

I find peoples’ discriminatory attitudes re the deaths of others sobering and most disturbing.

Does it mean that some peoples’ lives are more valuable than others? Killing people in the MIddle East isn’t too bad, ‘cause after all they’re Muslims? As I said, disturbing indeed!

All red herrings folks. Here are a few bits that I have been able to piece together from the non English speaking press and location sympathetic blogs…:

1)Oslo police were doing bomb terror exercises in Oslo immediately before the “event” much in the same vein as the same day police - bomb - terror exercises on 911 and 7/7 for buildings and subways of a few years back.

2)The bombing of the government buildings included the PM’s offices while he was visiting the weekend retreat Island where his Young Socialist movement was voting for a Independent Palestinian state and just after the Norwegian Government had declared a pro Palestinian position and was digging in against the IMF and the EU.

3)Fertiliser bombs don’t blow holes in buildings like this…whether in Oklahoma City or Oslo, Norway.

4)The guy is a Christian fundamentalist, whiter than white, a Freemason with supposed right wing connections. Some say he was an insider. Mmmm! The lone nutter eh - a la Oswald, Timothy McVeigh, John Wilkes Booth, John Hinkley - oh I could go on for hours here.

5)He appears to be the most efficient pistolero in history – give the guy a couple of hand guns and he kills 90 people without anyone fighting back. (Oops sorry that has now been dropped to 76…but that is also incredible so wait for it to come down to say 40). Even Columbine shooters were not that efficient and they had help.

6)Police and MSM appear to have ignored eyewitness accounts of second and possibly third shooters (see Columbine etc) by survivors of shooting taking place simultaneously as well as at other points on the island.

7)The NATO trained Swat team played role of Keystone Cops and didn’t arrive for over an hour (some reports have it at 90 minutes), because their helicopter was broken and they lost their boat. Lol. (They could have swum to island in full gear in 15 minutes.) We’re are talking about the crackiest troops in Norway. Not gonna happen people!

8)When apprehended, Breivik was carrying a knife. He has denied he is a terrorist but supposedly admitted the shooting. Uh?

9)MSM swung straight into action with a full story and profile.

10)There are reports that Breivik’s Facebook and Twitter accounts went up on July 17th. Uhh?

Is this dude a fall guy for something much more sinister or is it just that am I from Missouri?

When the Murdoch and other right wing press rush to condemn something as being a Islamist terrorist attack my antennae immediately activate and I begin looking for the real truth.

I hope the Murdoch/News of the World scandal in the UK lead to the dismantling of his vicious empire and trust the Norwegians (unlikely as it seems) don’t follow the US path following 9/11…was it? or 9/12, 9/13 whatever I forget. I understand some are complaining that Breivik is likely to face a maximum sentence of only 21 years. If so, so be it, the Norwegians should remain committed to their tolerant response to everything.